Nokia N-series touch phone soon

It seems Nokia is keen to foray deep into the touchscreen phone market, taking on Apple's iPhone. After the launch of its first touchscreen phone with 5800 Xpressmusic this month, Nokia is now gearing up to roll out another touchscreen phone as part of its popular N-series.

Interestingly, this model too would be rolled out in key Asia-Pacific markets like India ahead of the US and Europe, according to company sources.

"We will have a plethora of touchscreen phones coming up, including an N-series device very soon," admitted Nokia India marketing director Devinder Kishore.

According to speculation, the device could come ported with an 8 megapixel camera. Currently, Nokia phones come with cameras up to 5 megapixel resolution, unlike many Samsung and LG phones which boast of 8 megapixel cameras. If true, this will indicate an ever-increasing willingness in the Nokia stable to take on Apple at one hand and take on its aggressive Korean rivals on the other.

The launch of another Nokia touchscreen phone will further fuel the already sizzling battle of touchscreen phones. In the last few months, all major mobile manufacturers like Samsung, BlackBerry, Motorola and Google have unveiled their touchscreen devices.

Earlier this month, Nokia had unveiled its much-awaited touchscreen phone, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. The company's answer to Apple's iconic touchscreen gadget iPhone, Nokia 5800 can handle 60 different languages and will be in shops all over the globe, including the US, just before the end of the year.

Nokia 58100 has 81MB of internal memory and comes with an 8GB micro-SD card as standard equipment. The phone runs on Nokia/Symbian's S60 fifth edition operating system.

The handset is a GSM/EDGE/HSDPA 3G device along with 802.11b/g Wi-Fi and Bluetooth (with stereo audio) and USB 2.0 connectivity. It also has A-GPS and Nokia Maps for voice-guided navigation.

Nokia 5800 has a pair of stereo speakers and a 3.2 megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss lens and a dual-LED flash. The battery life is reportedly as much as nine hours (GSM) or five hours (HSDPA), 35 hours for music playback or three hours of video. Standby time is up to 17 days.

Beginning next year, the phone will feature Nokia's Comes With Music service, which aims to challenge Apple Inc's dominance of the digital music market.